Nov. 1906, First Edition.
Octavo, 308 pages. X-Library with usual library marks. Tight, clean copy, uncut edges. Paper spine label.
Nathaniel Southgate Shaler (1841-1906) was an American paleontologist and geologist who wrote extensively on the theological and scientific implications of the theory of evolution.
Shaler also served as a Union officer in the U.S. Civil War He was a fencer, a natural horseman and even in his fifties counted a day lost if he was not able to walk six miles. During the Civil War he recruited the 5th Artillery Battery for the Union and took rank as its captain in 1862. Shaler Battery, which he fortified when a Confederate army threatened Cincinnati in 1862, still can be seen at Evergreen Cemetery. Recurring bouts of severe bronchitis forced him to resign in 1864.
Editorial Reviews
Product Description
A selection of astonishing poems written late in life by one of the leading American scientists of the 19th Century. Nathaniel Shaler had been an artillery officer in the Army of Kentucky during the Civil War. In these poems, he returns in memory to experiences he could never leave behind. With an introduction, notes, and a useful appendix by editor R.L. Barth.
About the Author
Nathaniel Shaler was a student at Harvard, studying zoology and geology under Louis Agassiz, when the Civil War broke out. He completed his studies, then in 1862 returned to his native Kentucky where he took a commission as an artillery officer in the Army of Kentucky. For the next two years, he went through the kind of experiences that only happen in war. After the war, he had a distinguished career as a leading figure in the American scientific community. But the experiences of the war never left him, and late in life Shaler wrote a series of narrative poems about the war. The poems are remarkable although largely forgotten now. They are all the more remarkable in that Shaler had no prior history as a poet. R.L. Barth--himself a poet who has written often of experiences in war--has unearthed Shaler's poems, selected and edited the best of them, and provided an introduction, notes, and an appendix.
